Matrix effect impact on measuring hardness of metals bombarded by accelerated ions using laser induced breakdown spectroscopy

For safety reasons, the need of a fast in situ technique for measuring change in surface hardness of nuclear reactor vessel walls due to ion bombardment has great importance. Material hardness measurement using laser induced breakdown spectroscopy has been demonstrated as a new promising technique. The effect of the material matrix is one of the challenges that this technique for hardness measurement may face. In this work, the plasma excitation temperature Te has been used to measure the relative hardness of some pure Ti and Ti alloy samples with different hardnesses. The hardness of these samples was changed by irradiating the samples with 1 MeV carbon (C) ions with different doses. On studying the average crystallite size of these samples using x-ray diffraction and its relation with hardness, it was found that pure Ti samples and Ti alloys show different behaviors. On the other hand, it was found that although there is a good linear relation between Te and the Vickers hardness, the sample matrices have a strong influence on the measurements, especially for samples with small hardness value differences, irrespective of their average crystallite size.